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TOPIC: Audio stuttering

I'm experiencing audio stutter while playing movies via the Raspberry Pi to the TV. I used to have the 1080p videos buffering all the time, but I fixed by switching my shares from Samba to NFS, using Hanewin NFS Server. That fixed all the buffering issues and makes the Pi read the shares much, much faster.

Now the last issue I need to fix: audio glitching. I hear static pops through the audio when playing movies. Both 720p and 1080p video's do it. It does not seem to relate to scene intensity or something like that. I've tried turning on and off DTS and switching the audio from 5.1 to 2.0 etcetera, the pops never dissappear. I've also overclocked the Pi (850/350/450) but this only makes the Pi snappier. It does not fix the problem.

So, is this a problem more people are experiencing or is it something that relates to the alphaish nature of the audio drivers present in current builds? (I'm on r11524)

Hi gunja, thanks for the advice.
I tried to set the clock to 800 and 850, and set hdmi_boost to 4 and 7, but the issue still remains.
I also change some xbmc options, like video synch, but I'm starting to think that it's a audio driver related problem.

HDMI plays fine.
But with analog audio, when playback starts it "pops" my boxes (TV or stereo hifi).
Pretty annoying and bad for the boxes.
Also you hear a lot of noise and clicks.

Or analog audio out has bad chips or failing software.

With analog video, the pi starts up, I adjust the corners of the screen with those blue crossed.
Screen is filled fine. But when i start a movie playback I get black corners and smaller screen than I setup. If you return back to the XBMC menu's the screen is left small.
Trying to adjust it again: those blue crosses aren't visible fully anymore around the edges

Very dissapointing... Pi....
These 2 problems are both wih OpenELEC as with RaspBMC distribution

The Raspberry guys added analog audio and video but that sucks completely....
For analog older TV completely not workable....

For me it pops and clicks on audio analog and HDMI as well.
o for analog, it only pops whenever I play or stop playback
o for HDMI it pops on play and stop and sometimes clicks while playback or adds clipping which is very noisy and bad for the speakers.
BTW, whatever I try, I'm unable to make the PI passthrough HDMI. Can anybody tell me how I need to set things up? I've tried all configurations I could think of.
I'm on OpenELEC-RPi.arm-devel-20120704203304-r11493. Is there any way I can get any updates (nightly builds) or do I need to build my own for the PI?

For me it pops and clicks on audio analog and HDMI as well.
o for analog, it only pops whenever I play or stop playback
o for HDMI it pops on play and stop and sometimes clicks while playback or adds clipping which is very noisy and bad for the speakers.
BTW, whatever I try, I'm unable to make the PI passthrough HDMI. Can anybody tell me how I need to set things up? I've tried all configurations I could think of.
I'm on OpenELEC-RPi.arm-devel-20120704203304-r11493. Is there any way I can get any updates (nightly builds) or do I need to build my own for the PI?

With regards to the build, thats the last "official" one, you can build your own if you so wish (I've still nto got round to it TBH).

Now with regards to the HDMI out, etc. I've noticed that changing settings within the system area really has little effect. Does setting 'DTS capable amp' do anything, or does it check over HDMI what the 'receiver' is capable of. I say this, because sometimes I can select a refreh rate of 24, and sometimes not less than 50 (exactly the same build, depends if AMP comes on before the TV).

Also is there a way to check what the pi 'sees' from the TV (i.e. read the ECID information?). I'm not convinced that what I change in settings is actually 'listened' to by the pi, and lots of people have mentioned that they've set "HDMI audio out", and it's not working...

With analog video, the pi starts up, I adjust the corners of the screen with those blue crossed.
Screen is filled fine. But when i start a movie playback I get black corners and smaller screen than I setup. If you return back to the XBMC menu's the screen is left small.
Trying to adjust it again: those blue crosses aren't visible fully anymore around the edges

To fix this, I played around with my tv settings. My Samsung's remote has a "P.SIZE" (for picture size) button. I switched it to "fit to screen" and that sets the default size for xbmc to fit your screen perfectly. No need to adjust.

Hi, I have the same problem on all openelec and raspbmc build I have tried. I have a DTS and DD capable reciever that is connected by HDMI. I have overclocked, booted from USB HDD and tried all possible sound and screen resolutions with no success. I guess it is the ALPHA stage alsa driver. Anyway, is there any build without these problems? Is this problem something everyone that uses HDMI experiences?

fixed that: I had to add hdmi_force_edid_audio=1 in config.txt and this way it does send the correct audio fine.
"hdmi_force_edid_audio Pretends all audio formats are supported by display, allowing passthrough of DTS/AC3 even when not reported as supported."

with my set-up now, I only get the pops sometimes when playback is started and sometimes when stopped.
I think it would be great if audio signal was always present and not open/closed on start/stop. I'm not sure how it is implemented now but it looks like the audio pipe is opened and closed every time.

I have audio set-up for HDMI 5.1 with boost on downmix, output to all speakers not activated, AC3 and DTS passthrough.
on video settings I use 1280x768@60Hz, for playback I don't use matching of freq to video rate.
otherwise I think there are very, very few pops sometimes on playback but no more clipping or other artifacts since I can use the passthrough.
I didn't overclock anything.

Hi Imirel,
Thanks a lot for sharing your setup. The hdmi_force_edid_audio=1 solved my biggest problem, which was silence periods for stereo streams throughout a movie with something like 20 silences periods in total! I dont know why that setting would affect stereo stream decoded by the RPI, but it did for me.

I still have some silence periods for both stereo, ac3 and dts streams in the very beginning of the movies, but I can live with that.

There is still some minor crackling for the stereo stream, perhaps due to alpha alsa driver..

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